Archive of Our Own ^beta

His head hurts.

That’s the first thing Q thinks as consciousness trickles back in. It doesn’t hurt like when he’s been looking at his screens for too long, or when he’s forgotten that food and water is actually essential for human survival. It feels dull and aching, and there’s a specific point that pounds sharply in time with his heartbeat. That’s not good, he thinks.

The next thing he notices, is the pain in his arms that have been pulled harshly behind his back, and then he realises his wrists are bound tightly behind him. A sharp tug reveals they’re also tied to the chair he’s sat on. Oh, he thinks, distantly. I’ve been kidnapped.

It’s not the most surprising thought, even though it would be for most people. He’s the Quartermaster of MI6, he’s pissed people off and he knows things, aka he’s the prefect target for kidnapping. He’s even better in many ways because he doesn’t work in the field; people assume he hides behind his desk and can only fight on his computer and if they take that away he’s useless.

He sighs, testing the rope bounds around his wrists, and trying to remember how he got here. He thinks he can remember walking to the tube station in the dark, after too many hours of being awake at work, slightly dazed and distracted, thinking longingly of his bed. And then he remembers the squealing of car tyres and the sudden appearance of people in dark clothes and a whack around the head and his fumbling attempts to punch anything near him, and a sharp prick of pain in his neck, and then nothing.

He doesn’t let himself panic. In his orientation to MI6 every employee had to go through a ‘So you’ve been kidnapped, what do you do?’ exercise, just so they knew most people wouldn’t spill every government secret under the sun at the slightest provocation. Instead, he takes stock of his situation: hands bound, legs tied to the chair legs, chair metallic and heavy.

He blinks open his eyes, squinting in the bright lights shining down on him. The room is white, and that’s about all he can figure out. His glasses have been removed and everything is blurry and the light feels like daggers in his head. He can’t see any identifying features on the walls or floors and can only just make out the outline of the door in front of him.

He groans softly, lets his eyes close again and lets his head droop. His fingers contort to tease at the ropes, feeling out the knots and twists of it.

The door slides open, and he startles slightly, blinking up at a blurry dark figure standing in the doorway.

‘Look what we have here…’ the kidnapper says in a falsely cheery voice, and Q tries to take note of details: American accent, rough voice so maybe a smoker, six foot 2 or 3 maybe, although Q would be able to work that out better if he could see clearly and wasn’t sat down.

‘The Quartermaster of MI6, out of your natural habitat… tell me, is it nice to escape your basement for a change?’

Q doesn’t deign that with the response; he fixes his gaze on the wall behind the man’s shoulder and clenches his teeth.

A slap whips his head around, leaving a stinging soreness along one cheek.

‘You’ll answer me when I talk to you.’ The man says quietly, voice instantly turning dangerous.

Q clears his throat, swallows against his very dry throat, and croaks out. ‘It would certainly be a nicer change of scene, if I could see it properly. I do hope you haven’t broken my glasses.’ He wishes his voice sounded stronger, but his mouth feels dry and slightly disconnected from his brain. He mentally curses any and all sedatives and similar drugs.

The man laughs, and Q can see his figure rummage in his pockets, before glasses are roughly pushed onto Q’s nose. They’re not quite his prescription, but the world resolves into sharper clarity as he blinks, revealing the black haired, stubbled face of his kidnapper before him. He’s smirking dangerously, and despite his attempt at bravery, Q feels a trickle of fear run down his spine and pool in his stomach.

‘Thank you.’ He says politely, and the man’s grin stretches even wider.

‘Here’s what we’re going to do.’ The man says, enunciating his words clearly and slowly, ‘I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer them. If you don’t, I’m going to make your life very painful for you, and we wouldn’t want that would we?’

Q doesn’t answer, and gets a slap across the other cheek for his trouble.

‘Are we understood?’ The man demands.

Q stares defiantly into his eyes, and says ‘Yes, we’re understood.’

*

Q doesn’t tell them anything.

They want information about MI6 and the double 0s and their missions and the secret technology they’re working on, and Q keeps his mouth resolutely shut. He won’t betray the people he works for, and while he hasn’t been trained for this, he knows what’s expected of him.

Every second of his silence makes his kidnapper angrier, and he earns more slaps for his trouble, along with a hard stamp on his foot that he’s pretty sure breaks a toe of two.

And then he calls in his friends. They are a lot less against getting their hands dirty. They untie him from the chair, throw him onto the floor and start with kicking him hard any time he refuses to answer a question they ask him. He curls up into a ball, tries to protect his head, and vital organs, but they are stronger than him, and forcefully straighten him out and break a couple of ribs for good measure.

Once they’ve tied him to the chair again, they pull out their knives and start on the more bloody work. One of them slices a cut just under his eye when he refuses to tell them what MI6’s involvement in the recent coup in Bolivia was. One of them slashes a line across his forearm when he won’t tell them whether 006 was the Agent that escaped the explosions that brought down an underground organisation in Estonia.

Q keeps his teeth gritted, refusing to let them hear anything from him even as pain burns through him. He doesn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing he’s affected by their methods.

Finally, after what must be a few hours, the leader says to leave him for the night, and that they would resume in the morning. He looks down at Q with angry, deadly eyes, and Q suddenly wishes, that 007 could come and rescue him sooner rather than later. The leader raises a fist, and whacks Q around the head, and everything goes black.

*

When he next wakes up his body is stinging all over, bruised and sore and tender. He winces as he blinks open his eyes to find the lights dimmed and the glasses still on, and he thanks whoever may be listening for small mercies. He tries to ignore the thrum of worry in his stomach, one that points out he has not exactly been trained to resist torture (or at least not as much as the double 0s) and therefore at some point they might get imaginative and manage to break him. He hopes he won’t, is more than willing to die than endanger the lives of other people by spilling secrets, but even so, he’s not immune to fearing pain and death.

He had hoped 007 would come for him before he blacked out, he remembers. He hates the though instinctively, because he shouldn’t doubt his own ability to get out of this situation himself, and it’s embarrassing. Even so, he keeps the thought clutched tight in his heart, a shard of hope in a situation that could quickly become hopeless.

Q takes another look around the room, which is much more effective now he can see clearer. The room is, as he concluded before, bare and empty as far as he can see. That doesn’t particularly help with finding ways to escape, but it does help in that it means he can’t see any security cameras, even if he cranes his head around to see as far behind him as he can. That’s definitely a benefit on his side.

A sense of determination settles in his bones, and his shifts almost impatiently on the chair, noting the twinges of pain the movement provokes and breathing them away. He’s going to prove to everyone – including himself – that he doesn’t need to be rescued, he can get himself away from these morons who have taken him.

He starts to slowly work on the ropes binding his wrists, stretching his fingers as far as he can to try and assess the knots tying the rope together and to look for any weaknesses in the ropes themselves. He fiddles for a while, and then works out he won’t be able to pull the ropes apart without full use of his hands, so he starts to move his wrists and wriggle his hands as much as he can, trying to loosen the bindings.

It takes hours, and it hurts. He’s not particularly squeamish – can’t be when he has to watch camera footage of kidnappings and high stakes missions and crime scenes – but even he blanches slightly when he starts to feel blood trickling down his skin as his wrists become rubbed raw. He clenches his teeth, doesn’t let up on the action, and feels the rope start to go sodden as his blood soaks into it, but he can also feel them loosening.

He finds a fray with his fingers, where he’s tugging enough that the fibres are pulling apart, and he focuses his efforts there, tugging and pulling on the area of weakness. It takes a few more agonising minutes, but suddenly the tension falls away, and the ropes slacken completely, allowing him to wriggle his hands out of them. He wastes no time in bending down and unfastening his legs, trying to ignore the vibrant red around his wrists and tricking down his hands.

He stands up, winces at the flash of pain through his injured foot, and stumbles slightly as his head rushes with the movement, dizziness and fatigue making his legs tremble. He doesn’t quite know how long he’s actually been here, how long he’s been unconscious, and therefore how long he’s gone without food or water. It’s something he doesn’t have the luxury of worrying about right now, so he forces himself to move to the door.

It’s a plain panel, imbedded into the wall with no keyhole or handle. He imagines it must slide into the wall, and imagines a control panel on the other side, where he can’t access it. He frowns, then reaches for his shirt, which is ripped and dirtied, but still relatively whole. He pulls up the hem, finds the label and spare button sewed onto it… or at least the place where a spare button would have been if he hadn’t replaced it with a waterproof tracker and electrical disrupter.

His heart pounds as he pulls it off the shirt, placing it against the wall, and flicking it on. The sound of a locking mechanism clicking open emanates from the wall, and a moment later the door slides open. Q lets out a quiet sigh of relief, nerves fluttering in his stomach, and gingerly pokes his head out of the door, looking left and right up the corridor. It’s deserted, the lights still dim, but he knows he must be running out of time before someone returns to check on him.

He has no idea which way the exit is, so he takes a wild guess and heads right, forcing his legs to move at a fairly quick pace even though they tremble at the sudden action and he has to limp slightly to keep weight off his injured foot. He keeps to the shadows, glancing around corners before darting to the next relatively sheltered place. His head pounds in time with his heartbeat, and he keeps it as still as possible, and tries to ignore the bursts of dizziness if he flicks his head around too quickly.

The compound he’s in is like a maze, and he curses architects, designers and evil villains everywhere for not deigning to put signposts in their creepy lairs. Every corridor looks very similar to the last, and he can’t work out if he’s underground so no natural light is coming in, or if he’s just so far into the building that he can’t see windows anyway. It’s also deserted, and with every step he feels his fear build as he doesn’t feel like he’s getting any closer to escaping. He knows he doesn’t have much time, and the silence broken only by his footsteps sets his teeth on edge.

Q should have known it would never be as easy as he hoped it would be. He pokes his head around a corner and finally sees two armed guards coming his way. He ducks down, presses himself into the wall behind a pillar and forces himself to stop breathing as they pass. Once they’re gone, he relaxes slightly, moves further down the corridor, and then a door open on his left and five more guards emerge.

He doesn’t have time to hide, and they see him instantly, yelling something in a language he doesn’t know. He doesn’t stick around to find out what they’re saying, instead turning on his heel and running as fast as can, with the guards instantly giving chase, a stray bullet or too firing over his head.

Unfortunately for him, he’s injured, tired, dehydrated, and hungry, and the well-rested and healthy guards catch up to him fairly quickly. They pounce on him, and he throws one off with strength he didn’t know he had, desperation and panic making him quicker and stronger. Another rugby tackles his legs, and he goes down, hands only barely managing to come up and break his fall. He kicks out, feels his heel connect with a nose and earning himself a grunt of pain, but before he can push himself up again, there are people pinning his arms, and a foot on his back pushing his chest and abused ribs into the floor. He struggles futilely, and then freezes as the cold metal of a gun touches his hair. He wonders whether this is it, whether he will die right here right now, but then the gun moves, and cracks against his skull and he knows nothing more.

*

He wakes up again and he knows he’s in trouble.

They seem to have realised he’s more competent than they thought, and he comes to with his hands bound tight above his head to a hook in the ceiling, his shoulders aching at the strain, and his clothes torn off down to his boxers.

The leader from before is in front of him, brows drawn and gaze looking decidedly deadly. When Q flexes his sore wrists, he notes that they’ve replaced the ropes with metal cuffs. Hopelessness surges through his chest, and he struggles to fight it down.

‘You’ve been a naughty boy, haven’t you?’ the man says, and Q closes his eyes, braces himself for the worst, and hopes against hope that MI6 know where he is and are putting a rescue mission together right this instant. ‘You’re going to regret that.’ The kidnapper says, and Q takes a deep breath, and prays that he will be strong enough.

He hears a knife being unsheathed, tries to ignore his heart beating a frenzied rhythm in his chest.

And it begins.

*

The interrogation turned torture lasts hours, and then days, and then he loses his awareness of time and doesn’t know how long he’s been there.

The words of his torturers blur into questions repeated with more and more frustration, and his answers become routine in their defiance and ignorance. It feels like his tongue only knows how to say No and I don’t know and I won’t tell you, and even those are losing their enunciation on his lips. He’s only given the water and food needed to stay alive, and his voice is cracked and wrecked from whimpers and screams and cries he can’t quite keep in check, and he can’t remember why he was trying to hide them anyway.

After a while there isn’t a part of him that doesn’t hurt, and he’s forgotten what it feels like to not be hurt and in pain with every breath. He gets dropped to the floor and pounded with fists and boots. He gets cut with knives and burnt with cigarette butts and every moment is agony.

He tries to stay strong, tries to put a brave face on it, breath through the pain and use every ounce of his willpower to not give in to these maniacs. But it becomes harder and harder when his body protests every movement, when he’s left alone trembling through the night hours and his thoughts drift to what will happen when they decide he’s not worth the effort of keeping alive anymore. He thinks about how he didn’t want to need to be rescued by Bond, and now he really, really does. He wants Bond to be here, but he isn’t a damsel in distress, he just needs 007 to be here, because then maybe it would stop hurting.

They break his ankle one day, and he screams but still refuses to answer their questions. They carve shapes into his chest and he stays resolutely silent. They stab him in the shoulder and he yelps, feeling the warm blood flow down his back. He shakes and gasps, and a few days later he feels the heat emanating from the wound and the way he’s sweating and trembling and so weak, and he knows the injury is infected. His kidnappers don’t seem to care, and he knows he won’t last for much longer.

*

He stays as strong as he can, but then they go for his hands.

Q doesn’t know if the fever burning through his veins has destroyed any last traces of resilience, whether the hopelessness of his parched throat and blurry vision and fevered hallucinations have tipped him over the edge, but they tie him up in a different position and pull his hands in front of him, and he panics. They can’t touch his hands. He needs his hands. He needs them whole and steady and capable. He needs them to type out lines of code and make tiny adjustments to innovative technical ideas, and he needs them be able to brush Bond’s hand as he passes over his latest firearm, so he can feel a tingle in his fingers that he’ll never speak about.

They hold out his left hand and break each finger individually, and Q sobs and sobs because he needs those fingers, and then he says ‘Please’ and he’s never begged to these people before.

‘Tell us the information.’ They say, and he shakes his head and grits his teeth.

‘No.’ He chokes out, and he wonders whether he has finally damned himself properly, and he wonders how he must look, bound and shaking and crying, and wonders if this means he’s broken yet.

The leader obviously has the same thought, because he peers at Q critically, and then gestures for the others to stop.

‘We’ll give him one more night.’ He orders, ‘He’ll break in the morning.’ He pauses, and his voice goes icy and it sends fear shooting through Q’s blood. He leans forwards, breaths a puff of warm, stagnant breath into Q’s face and says, ‘Or by this time tomorrow, you won’t have hands anymore.’

They string him back up, and Q hangs there listlessly, and thinks about regrets, and things he never got the opportunity to do, and making a better tracker system for MI6 employees, and blue, blue eyes that should have been here by now.

*

Q drifts, time slipping away like water through his fingers, and he knows deep down, with a bone-deep certainty that he’s fading fast.

In his outer awareness he hears distant gunfire and yelling, and something still working in his brain points out that that’s unusual, but he doesn’t have the energy to react.

The door slides open, and it startles him for a moment, wondering whether more time has passed than he realised and it’s morning already, but the figure in the doorway isn’t one he recognises from this place. It’s one he remembers from somewhere else, from a long time ago, and he wonders whether his brain has finally cooked enough with this fever to hallucinate 007 in front of him.

‘Q.’ The voice seeps into his consciousness, ‘Q?’

He struggles to grasp enough awareness to respond, tries to lift his heavy head, and then there are hands on his face helping him. Not harming him… how odd. His eyelids flutter, and a blurry face comes into focus in front of him, brows drawn in concern, lips pinched, and eyes that he would know anywhere.

‘Bond?’ he asks, and his voice is cracked and ruined.

‘Q.’ 007 says again, hands becoming more solid, ‘It’s okay, I’m here.’

‘You’re late,’ Q slurs, and Bond huffs a laugh as he reaches up and cuts Q down from the ceiling.

Q’s legs are in no condition to take his weight, and he falls to the ground as a heavy lump, only to be caught under the arms by Bond’s strong hands, and lifted to his feet, although he can’t support himself and Bond ends up taking most of his weight. Pain flares through him, and he groans, the world spinning sickeningly around him and he feels like he might be on fire.

‘Did you kill them?’ he manages to force out as darkness clouds the edges of his vision, and Bond drags him one step towards the door.

He just manages to hear Bond say ‘Yes,’ with a heavy layer of satisfied anger, and he gasps out a relived ‘Good,’ before his vision tunnels and he passes out.

*

He wakes to the steady beeping of a heart monitor, and the recognisable voice of Miss Moneypenny firmly telling Bond that he needs to leave because he’s ‘scaring the nurses.’

The comment makes Q chuckle slightly, which then makes him cough as his abused throat burns, which then makes pretty much every other part of his body hurt. Hands are instantly on him, soothing voices telling him to relax, that he’s in the medical ward, that he’s okay, and he wants to snap back that it’s easy for them to say, they’re not drifting between drug-induced fuzziness, exhaustion, and agony from torture.

He’s fed a couple of ice chips, which helps soothe his throat, and then he attempts to open his eyes, squinting at the bright lights and meeting the eyes of James Bond, who seems to be sitting next to his bedside.

‘Q.’ The man greets, cordially, and Q sees Eve roll her eyes good-naturedly over his shoulder, although her expression is intensely relieved.

‘Stop scaring the nurses, 007,’ he croaks, and Bond smiles, not even having the decency to look embarrassed.

‘I’m not doing anything of the sort.’ He says smoothly, and Miss Moneypenny tuts.

Bond’s eyes go serious, and he leans forwards lightly. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asks calmly, and Q is suddenly aware that Bond’s hand is on top of his on the blankets.

‘Like I got run over by a truck a few times,’ he says honestly, ‘but I’m okay.’

Relief flickers across Bond’s face, and he squeezes his hand slightly, although Q isn’t sure whether he imagined it. He’s feeling very disconnected from reality right now.

‘We’re glad you’re back, Q.’ Eve says kindly, and Bond’s lips twitch into the smallest smile in agreement.

‘I didn’t tell them anything.’ He says, suddenly feeling like this is something they need to know, ‘And I tried to escape, but it didn’t work… obviously.’

Eve touches his shoulder lightly, ‘We know you didn’t. You did really well, Q,’ she assures him, and then she’s all business again. ‘I’ll go and let M know you’re awake.’

Bond stares at him while they wait for Eve to leave, and Q struggles to maintain his intense eye contact, gaze flicking around the room. When the door closes, he finally lets out an exhale, and fiddles idly with the blanket under his fingers, feeling the exhaustion start to creep up on him again.

‘Did you get them all?’ he asks Bond softly, knowing he doesn’t need to elaborate.

‘Yes,’ Bond says seriously, ‘I’m sorry it took so long to get to you.’

Q attempts a shrug but his shoulders and ribs hurt like hell so he doesn’t quite manage it. ‘It’s alright,’ he says, even though it very nearly wasn’t, ‘I can look after myself.’

Bond huffs out a breath. ‘I know you can. You did well.’

Q basks in the praise for a moment, lets the realisation that he’s free from that place settle into his chest and fill him with relief. ‘Thank you,’ he says quietly, and he doesn’t just mean for the praise, he means for the rescue too, but he thinks Bond knows that. ‘Even so, I might leave other field missions to you for the foreseeable future.’ His eyelids flutter, tiredness dragging at his limbs.

‘That sounds fair,’ Bond chuckles slightly by his side, voice low and quiet.

Q hovers on the brink of sleep, warm and comfortable and alive. He must imagine the soft fingers brushing his hair off his forehead, must dream the light kiss to his forehead, and then he tumbles into exhausted slumber.